Restaurants
Antoine Verret wanted his grandmother's bistro back, in a space that had been a phone store for a decade. The trick with nostalgia is restraint: get the zinc bar, the bentwood chairs and the checkered floor right, then stop before it becomes a costume.
We argued about the floor for two weeks. He wanted wood; I wanted the black-and-white tile that every photograph of the old place shows. The tile won, laid in a slightly darker pair than stock so it reads aged rather than installed.
The lace half-curtains do the quiet work - they soften the street, filter headlights at dinner, and let the room glow amber from the sidewalk like a lantern.
